


The Unwinding Road

by Malkin Grey (malkingrey)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malkingrey/pseuds/Malkin%20Grey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Once upon a time there was a poor soldier, coming home from the wars...</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unwinding Road

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine; not for money. Minor spoilers for 4.03.

_Once upon a time there was a poor soldier, coming home from the wars..._

**San Diego, California**

John Winchester left the United States Marine Corps in the spring of 1973. He was almost twenty years old and felt at least ten years older. He was pretty sure he didn't look it, though. The little old lady in the Greyhound bus station, when she asked him to watch over her luggage while she went to powder her nose, said that he reminded her of her grandson in high school.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and didn't even flinch when she brought out the photos and confided that Donnie planned to enlist in the Corps as soon as he turned eighteen.

**Barstow, California**

Barstow was warm and dusty and smelled of the desert. The cashier in the bus stop cafeteria said that it hadn't rained or snowed there since last December. Last December, John Winchester had been slogging through the mud and rain in Da Nang province when a VC mortar round turned the man ahead of him into a bundle of red-soaked meat.

He bought a chicken salad sandwich and ate it quickly, then went outside to take deep breaths of the dry, sagebrush-scented air.

**Las Vegas, Nevada**

The bus didn't get to Las Vegas until after dark. The board in the Greyhound station said that the outbound coach for Denver left at 8:45 the next morning. Two years in the Corps had taught John how to sleep just about anywhere, but he didn't see the point of spending the night on a hard plastic chair in the station's waiting room when he could spend the next day napping on the bus. He stowed his duffel in one of the rental lockers and went out sightseeing instead.

Back in Kansas, while he was growing up, people had talked about Las Vegas like it was some kind of American Babylon, a wicked wonderland full of crime and sin and glamor all mixed up together. Since then, he'd gotten drunk and gotten laid and gotten stoned in Saigon and China Beach and more nameless stinking villages and rice paddies than he could count, and his standards for vice and depravity were considerably higher than they used to be.

He wandered along the neon extravaganza that was Fremont Street, where casinos like the Golden Nugget and the Horseshoe cast out their lures into the night, and thought for a while about trying his luck at one of the low-stakes poker tables, just so he could say later that he had. But somewhere in the back of his mind, poker still meant payday night card games with Deacon and Caleb and Roy, even though Roy was dead and Caleb had gone home to West Virginia and Deacon had surprised everybody by signing up for another hitch. If he wanted to play poker in Las Vegas, he'd have to share a table with strangers. John decided that he didn't feel like playing poker after all.

He went back to the bus station and spent the rest of the night sleeping sideways across four of the plastic chairs. When morning came, he was happy to board the new Greyhound coach, with its comfortable cushioned seats, and watch as the city streets slid past and turned to desert outside the window.

**Cedar City, Utah**

Utah was sun glare on red rock, and small towns shadowed by the mountains looming over them. The snack bar in the bus station sold packets of Fritos Corn Chips and Hostess Cupcakes; John bought one of each and ate them standing up where he could watch the bus and the station clock. Between bites he sipped at a bottle of Orange Crush he'd gotten from the station vending machine.

The only other person in the waiting room was a boy about John's own age with limp blond hair -- not so much long as hopeful, as if he'd skipped a couple of sessions at the barber shop. He didn't have any luggage, only a cheap fiberboard guitar case painted all over in psychedelic designs, roses and mandalas and twisting multicolored vines that made John's head ache just from looking at them. The guy watched the "Outgoing" side of the notice board like he was waiting for St. Peter to open up the gates of heaven.

After a while he said to John, "Are you waiting for the California bus?" From the way he pronounced the words "California bus," he couldn't imagine wanting another destination.

John shook his head. "I've been to California. Now I'm going home."

"Where's home?"

"Lawrence, Kansas."

"Man, that's almost as close to the middle of nowhere as Cedar City. I am _never_ coming back to this place."

"What are you going to do in California when you get there?" John asked.

"I've got friends," the guy said. "Musicians, like me. We're going to start a band."

"Well, good luck with that." John suspected that they would need it.

"Thanks. What about you?"

"Me?"

"Yeah. What are you going to do when you get back to Kansas?"

"Work on cars, maybe. Find a girl. Settle down."

"Seriously?" The boy sounded unconvinced that anyone would set up shop in Lawrence, Kansas, when California was on offer. "Whatever works for you, man."

"You, too." John glanced up at the clock. "Listen, I've got to go -- my bus is leaving." After a couple of seconds, because talking with this guy was making him feel old again, he added, "Be careful out on the coast. The people are different there."

"God, I hope so," said the boy fervently, and John laughed and went out to get on the bus.

**Denver, Colorado**

In Denver, John had a five-hour layover between buses -- not long enough to go sightseeing (if he'd had any idea what sights there were to see in Denver, which he didn't), but long enough to get tired of waiting. He bought a copy of the latest issue of _Popular Mechanics_ from the news stand and settled down to read.

About twelve pages in -- he was being conscientious and taking everything in order, including the table of contents and the ads -- he became aware of the faint tickling sensation, like the stiff edge of a feather drawn across the back of his neck, that meant somebody was watching him nearby. His pulse quickened and he gripped the magazine with both hands, because he wasn't going to embarrass himself by reaching for an M16 that wasn't there. Then, carefully, he looked up at the person who was looking at him.

She was a college girl, he could tell that much at a single glance -- long yellow hair and a University of Denver tee-shirt and a paperback copy of _Future Shock_, one finger between the pages holding her place -- and she looked so fresh and clean and _American_ that John felt like he could fall in love with her a little, just for that. He thought about striking up a conversation and seeing how far a soft voice and a slow smile could take him in his not quite four hours left in Denver, but the words never made it out of his mouth, because in the next moment he saw that _she_ was taking stock of _him_, his regulation haircut and his Corps-issued duffel bag and his dog tags on their chain just visible at the open collar of his shirt.

He'd heard the stories -- hell, everybody in the Corps had heard the stories -- about how returning soldiers were treated, and he'd changed into civvies as soon as the rules allowed, as a precaution.

Plainly, it wasn't working.

He braced himself for something -- he wasn't quite sure what -- but nothing happened. She looked away and went back to her book, and he went back to page thirteen of _Popular Mechanics_. He looked up again after finishing page twenty and saw that she was gone.

**Colby, Kansas**

When the bus pulled out of Colby, the afternoon sky was heavy with clouds. A gusting wind brought quick swirls of dust up from the side of the highway, then let them fall again as the air grew still, and the sky under the black edges of the thunderheads took on a greenish-yellow light.

He'd been away for too long, John thought. He'd almost forgotten what tornado weather felt like.

Not that he was particularly worried about a twister reaching down out of the storm clouds to carry him off to Oz or someplace. Kansas was big, and funnel clouds, for all the death and disaster packed inside of them, were small. He'd grown up here -- _near_ here, anyway, if you compared the distance left to go with how far he'd already come -- and he'd seen plenty of ugly skies in his life but never a tornado anywhere except in the newspapers.

Today wasn't going to be the day he saw his first one, either. The Greyhound bus rolled on east through alternating bands of driving rain and still air, and once or twice a quick barrage of hail, but if the lowering sky produced any tornadoes, they carried out their acts of destruction somewhere over the horizon out of his sight.

By evening the rain had stopped and the clouds were scattered. Behind him, the sky was crimson with the last of the setting sun.

**Lawrence, Kansas**

He didn't get to Lawrence until well after dark. His father was waiting for him at the bus station anyway, calling out to him by name and wrapping him in a tight and unexpected hug.

"It's nice to have you back, son," he said.

John let himself be embraced, and hugged the older man hard in return.

"It's nice to be here," he said, meaning it. Two years ago, they'd parted on an argument -- his father hadn't thought much of John's decision to enlist right out of high school instead of waiting around to see if his draft number came up -- and the worry had always been with him that he might come back to a cold welcome.

It felt good to be wrong.

"I picked us up a couple of steaks at the A&amp;P," his father said. "They don't feed you on those buses."

John hefted his duffel onto his shoulder. "I could handle a steak," he said. "Let's go home."


End file.
